Wolf’s Head Volume 3 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

As I noted a few weeks ago, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 3, collecting issues 5 and 6 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. This issue features a major confrontation between the Artificial Intelligence that Lauren Greene has befriended and the vile forces that seek to regain the AI at any cost.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 3’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988525-3. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.de (Germany), and so on.

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org and IndieBound

Please remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 4 will be released in early 2025, with subsequent volumes appearing throughout 2025.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene, dealing with a massive loss that was revealed in Volume 2, has her situation made all the harder as she struggles to come up with the money to cover a unexpected (and massive) expense, deal with the disappearance of her mom's dog, and attempt to communicate with the strange artificial intelligence her mom had befriended.

Just as things are appearing to get back to some degree of normalcy, Lauren is confronted by the corporate forces who created the AI and are attempting to hunt it down. Forced to defend the AI, Lauren's life and the lives of those she loves are very much in the balance as Jeremy Hamilton and his henchmen will not stop until the AI is theirs once again.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 3 consists of issues 5 and 6 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 5 and 6 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 3 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

   

   

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 3

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Wolf’s Head Volume 2 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

As I noted last week, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 2, collecting issues 3 and 4 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. And this issue features some significant events that really turn the series on its head, forcing Lauren (our main character) to make decisions. Decisions that she’d rather not make.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 2’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988524-6. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.de (Germany), and so on.

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org and IndieBound

But remember: I can’t control when and where this volume will become available. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 3 will be released next week. In fact, the metadata is already showing up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Here’s the blurb for Volume 2:

Lauren Greene and her mother, Patty, have a huge disagreement over the future of a self-aware Artificial Intelligence that her mom saved from a lab and sheltered from its war-mongering creators. Angry at her mother’s stubbornness and terrified of the world they’re suddenly involved in, Lauren storms out… only to be kidnapped by Jeremy Hamilton, the powerful man who invented the AI. Later that night, in trade for Lauren’s freedom, Patty surrenders herself and the AI machine to Hamilton.

Freed by Hamilton’s goons and assured that her mother is safe and will be released the next day, Lauren returns home to wait. But later that night, she learns, to her horror, that Patty has been suddenly hospitalized in critical condition and the AI is missing. Since the AI has protected her mother in the past, Lauren races against time to find it, hoping that it can save Patty yet again. As she searches frantically, and with her world turned upside down, Lauren must confront an old enemy, dodge new ones, and find the AI, which might not want to be found… before it’s too late for everyone.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 2 consists of issues 3 and 4 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 3 and 4 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 2 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

   

   

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 2

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Announcing Wolf’s Head Volume 1 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

Starting today, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are coming back into print in brand new editions! These are brand new editions with new covers and some additional new extra features. Each volume collects two digital issues; so Volume 1 collects issues 1 and 2, Volume 2 collects issues 3 and 4, and so on. These are all full colour editions and will be approximately 60 pages in length each. In fact, the first three volumes are exactly 60 pages (I know because I’ve already prepared the files for the printer!) and future volumes will be at that approximate page count.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 1’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988523-9. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org

I can’t control exactly when and where they’ll become available. Canada tends to be a little slower for whatever reason then some other countries, but that should change shortly. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help!

I’m really happy with how these turned out. And Volumes 2 and 3 will be released shortly. In fact, the metadata is already showing up on Amazon (Volume 2 and Volume 3) and Barnes & Noble (Volume 2 and Volume 3). And the first three volumes will be all out in time for Christmas!

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com with all kinds of additional information!

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As noted above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 1 consists of issues 1 and 2 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues #1 and #2 are below.

Please give them a try. And remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 1 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

   

   

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 1

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

The Back Story

Trade paperback was the original format for the series,¹ collecting two issues worth of each comic together. There were seven volumes of that original run, but these are all out of print now. What happened? Well, a number of things (some of it detailed here). The main problem is that there have been significant changes in the comic book market and weathering them took some doing. Back in 2019 or so, there was only one major distributor in the so-called Direct Market for print comics — namely Diamond Comic Distributors — and the main option for digital comics was ComiXology. All that has changed significantly in the past five years. Has it ever! Not only has Diamond seen their near-monopoly of print comics end, but digital comics have changed tremendously; Amazon ended ComiXology has a distinct platform, merging them into Kindle, and we’ve seen the explosion of webcomics, primarily in the WebToons format. And, of course, the COVID pandemic dramatically impacted comics and books, not to mention the horrible cost in human lives and health (some of which affected me personally).

My plans with those initial trade paperbacks were definitely affected by these changes. Losing my initial sales rep at Diamond also hurt. To make a long story short, I decided to end that trade paperback series, allowing the “trades” to go out of print, and focused on digital going forward. At the time that decision was made, ComiXology was still a significant player and they supported independent comics well. However, the folding of ComiXology into the broader Kindle publishing landscape² was not good for independents and certainly not good for me. “Discoverability” on Kindle was far more difficult then it had been on ComiXology and that also negatively affected sales. I also struggled with awareness, even with fans of the series. It wasn’t easy for readers who had already purchased digital issues to be notified of the release of new digital issues, something that was a “snap” in the ComiXology days.

Partially as a response to this and partially due to my own explorations of new printing options, I created the first WOLF’S HEAD hardcover. This deluxe edition, collecting the first six digital issues, was and is beautiful and I’m extremely proud of it, but the price point is high and that is definitely a barrier to some. And losing visibility on Kindle disrupted discovery with the hardcover; even if people found the digital series, it (again) wasn’t easy for people to discover the hardcover. Extremely frustrating and try as I might, I could not manage to bridge that gap.

So that left me with a conundrum. I could go ahead with the hardcover series, but my experiences over the past few years haven’t filled me with a lot of hope that this is a viable option. It’s more of a niche, which is fine, but a niche doesn’t build an audience. That certainly doesn’t rule out more hardcovers, but they have to be treated carefully. With digital rapidly diminishing as a sales option, I decided to cancel the Kindle series last week.³ That left a gap… and that brings me to today’s announcement!

Lastly, what about digital? Well, there’s a big change in that area, too. Going forward, the digital issues will be released for free on the Internet Archive, as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As you may know, the Internet Archive went through a number of cyberattacks in 2024 and that’s slowed things down a tad. I’m trying to work out a few additional details, but when that is finalized I’ll be posting links here and on the “Pirate Von” section of this website. Why use the Internet Archive? The answer is easy; a large number of people use it, the site automatically converts source files into a number of formats (saving me both work and time), the site is easy and intuitive to use, and “discoverability⁴” works well.

Change never stops, but I’m very pleased with this new development. And, as always, if you like the series, please share that with your friends and family!

End Notes

1  You can still see a few of these at places like AbeBooks.

2  Please see https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/comics-store/mkt/comixology-app-merge-faq

3  Don’t worry; those of who have bought those issues still have ‘em!

4  I had actually experimented with WebToons, thinking that might be an alternative, but I found the amount of work combined with very poor “discoverability” was not a recipe for success.

The Impossibles (Story Fragment)

A few years ago I submitted the following pages along with a story proposal (titled “The Impossibles” to a publisher of some renown, but the pitch was sadly rejected. I sat on it for a bit, but I liked it enough that I wound up re-purposing a good chunk the story proposal for what would eventually become my ongoing comic book series “Wolf’s Head.”

While I was prepping for a recent art/craft show, I came across the pages and thought they’d be fun to post here. Sadly it’s not a complete story and ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but if you don’t mind that you might get a kick out of it. And who knows… maybe one day I’ll revisit “The Impossibles” again. One thing I’ve learned with art: never say never!

Oh! Some of you might recognize page 1. What I just said about re-purposing story and art? Well, I took that page and used a tweaked version of it for the cover of my short story collection “Stories! 2015 to 2019” which you can read for free right here.

Have fun!

Pssst! Click on the image to make it bigger!

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Interview with Barney Smith of StoryComic fame

Barney Smith of the fantastic StoryComic site (https://www.storycomic.com/) was nice enough to have me on his show! And unlike some other radio/podcast shows, this was actually done live in front of the camera! Video! Shocking!

What is truly amazing to me is that Barney has now done 289 (!) episodes of his show. That’s 289 interviews of all kinds of writers and artists, many working in comics but certainly not everyone, and he does it with humour and grace along with a boatload of great questions, too. And since he’s based in Vermont, he’s also done a special subset of episodes that deal with creative folks that live in that state (I think about 42 episodes in that category). That is one hell of a lot of work and, as I noted to Barney, I’m not sure how he does it. A love of the medium certainly helps and he has that in spades, but still… I get tired just thinking about how I’d handle that many interviews, especially given all of the research and energy that goes into it.

And, of course, The Center for Cartoon Studies is based in White River Junction, Vermont. That’s important because the school, as they note on their website, “centers on the creation and dissemination of comics, graphic novels and other manifestations of the visual narrative” as is one of the few that do that sort of thing in North America. See? How cool is that?!

So, what do we chat about? Well, not only my background in art and comics, but also how I approach telling the stories I do. We’re talking art here (and by art I mean “art” that’s very broadly defined). In other words, there are no right and wrong answers to how one makes art. There are just tools and different approaches and a great deal of learning. Whew, boy, the learning truly never stops and that’s one of the joy (and, okay, one of the occasional pains) about art. I was delighted that Barney was interested in talking about this, mainly because I think it’s one of those things that can kinda get glossed over. In other words, how one (as a creator) thinks about and approaches the story they are trying to tell is very important. It’s very easy to confuse or otherwise lose the reader and, at least for my own work, I rarely want to do it and never want to do it by accident (for those interested, one of my most abstract stories is this older one, that really needs to be read at least twice to really “grok” what it’s about).

And, of course, we take a pretty deep dive into WOLF’S HEAD, my ongoing comics series, too. (and pssst! Don’t forget to check out the new snazzy trailer for it, too!)

Okay! With that out of the way, here is the interview itself from YouTube (and if this doesn’t play for you, you can jump directly to the interview on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P-TMAfNxMY). Alternatively, there’s also a terrific podcast version that you can listen to — or even download the .mp3. That’s on PodBean at https://storycomic.podbean.com/e/episode-289-wolf-s-head-when-an-ai-baby-teams-up-with-an-ex-cop-von-allan-exclusive-interview/

I hope you enjoy it! And many thanks to Barney for having me on to talk about a medium I love so much!

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Wolf's Head Book 1 Trailer

I’ve very pleased to share this, though it took quite a bit of work to get ‘er done. So! This a short trailer I created for my ongoing comic book series WOLF’S HEAD, specifically for the first hardcover collection. It took some doing, mainly because there are some short animated sequences; since I’m definitely not an animator, I had to learn some new tools to make it work. That’s the challenge of creating anything, but perhaps especially art, but it’s also part of the fun, too. It’s also really neat to see my art presented in this way. Still me, but different.

This is really a narrative trailer, for lack of a better phrase. I wanted to avoid just “throwing” artwork at viewers and try, as elegantly and succinctly as possible, to get to the heart of the story. I think the trailer does that, but of course, you will be the ultimate judge. ‘Course, if you like it, please do share it far and wide.

For those interested, I used Blender to create the animations and then put the whole thing together using OpenShot. Both software packages are free and are very powerful. Blender, in particular, is remarkable. Folks have made full length 3D animated films using it, but I was really taken with Blender’s 2D options.

The video is embedded below, but if you can’t see it, you can view it directly on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1llp9chMzw

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Talk Ottawa Interview

One of my very first long form interviews and one that I thought was lost! This was done way back in 2008 with James Hendricks, then host of Talk Ottawa here in Ottawa, Ontario. This interview meant a lot to me since I was basically just starting out and he and the producers of the show were very open and welcoming.

James and I chat about comics and graphic novels, the challenges of being an indy artist, and the changing face of technology and how that applies to comics. We also do a deep dive into my very first graphic novel, titled “the road to god knows…”, that deals with parental mental illness. In the case of that comic, I drew on a lot of my own experiences growing up with my mom; she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was very young. We talk about that, too.

Oh! My art that was presented in the original video was pretty rough, so I decided to update it with art revisions I did some years ago.

The player should work below. If not, or if you'd prefer to watch on Youtube, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS8ADTEwBcI

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Wolf’s Head Issue 18 Page 1 Process

I thought it would be fun to share some of the ol’ “process” behind a recent page from WOLF’S HEAD. In this case, it’s the first page to issue 18. And hey, 18 issues in for an indy comic book series is not too shabby, folks.

This page features Lauren Greene and Super Bob Sanchez chit-chatting in a diner in Alberta. The page also builds off of issue 17 and the various struggles that Lauren is currently going through. While I don’t think there’s any “right” or “correct” way of starting a comic, I’ve long been partial to opening with a splash page to get things going. This is especially useful here because the preceding panel in the previous issue was actually very small. So if one is reading these issues in sequential order, it should be fun to leave off last ish with a tiny panel and then start this one with a biggie.

I’ll start with the final coloured and lettered page and we can work backwards to the initial layouts. Oh, one important caveat: while some pages take a bit of visual brainstorming, in this case I knew exactly where I was going (building from last issue, right?) so I didn’t need to do that. That’s often not the case and many pages take a bit of thumbnailing (usually tiny thumbnails) to work out mentally how I want to approach a page. This is often especially true for covers; considerations of logos and whatnot influence how the page might look. In other words, sketching and “mucking about with page design” is a tried and true way to go.

Next are the final inks, including screen tones (or, if you will, Ben Day dots or what I long called “zipatones”). Generally I do not include the lettering in the final inks (well, at least for colour work) and that is reflected here. Inking is one of my favourite things to do and this page was a blast to work on!

Next up are the final tight pencils. There is a bit of visual cheating going on here. I actually rarely rough out a page like this as one individual unit. Rather, I actually do various pencil sketches (and sometimes even inked sketches) on different sheets of paper, scanning them into my computer and finalizing the pencil layout that way. I like that approach, mainly because it allows me to isolate various parts of the illustration and work on that. In this case, the diner is a good example: isolating the perspective drawing from the figure drawing allowed me to play around with some ideas, something a bit harder to do if everything was on one sheet of Bristol board.

The next two illustrations showcase more of what I mean. First is the tighter pencilled perspective sketch of the diner and that’s followed by the very loose sketch (this time with my trusty Tombow brush pen) as I loosely laid down some ideas. These actually follow part of the same process I described here, but in this case I did do a round of tighter pencils rather than just go into final inks because I needed to be sure of a few different things. The trade-off is time, but I felt it was worth it in this case.

Not included here are the separate figure sketches. I generally do loose little gestures, often in ink, and then scan, check, print out, and tighten into final pencils. You can see the final result in that first sketch above.

Some pages are slow, some go surprisingly quick, and this one was somewhere in the middle. It was a lot of fun to do and hopefully starts off issue 18 in an engaging, intriguing, and beautiful way.

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

What? Free Comics by Von Allan? Yes!

UPDATE! While the Amazon deal described below has expired, I have decided to start making my comics freely available to all. Please visit https://www.vonallan.com/p/pirate-von.html for more information and download links!

For a limited time, eight of my comics formatted for Amazon’s Kindle are available for free! These are free anywhere in the world (well, at least those places that have access to Kindle). If you have been on the fence of trying my comics, this is a great way to give them a try. And, if you know people who might like my comics but have never tried them, please pass this along. Sharing is caring and all that and, of course, one can’t beat free.

The titles in question are as follows:

WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP!

STORIES! 2015 TO 2019

And the first six issues of my ongoing series WOLF’S HEAD. Oh, and please do not forget this: since the first six issues are available for free, buying the entire series in digital format (17 issues!) is now about $12.00 US cheaper than normal. In addition to that, these first six issues also make up the first collected hardcover volume, so if you’d like to try the series out but felt that the hardcover was too pricey, this is a great to “dip a toe in the water.”

I’ll put the links to both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca below. For those of you visiting from other parts of the world, please note that all you need to do is replace the “dot com” or “dot ca” with your own regional domain and you’ll be taken to that Amazon site. For example, if you are in Spain and use Amazon.es, all you need to do is replace the “dot com” part of the link (for example, my author page at https://www.amazon.com/Von-Allan/e/B002BM77EM/) with “dot es” (https://www.amazon.es/Von-Allan/e/B002BM77EM/). And voila! There’s my author page for Amazon Spain!

With that out of the way, here we go!

Amazon.com

WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089QXBYY9

STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089QX5LJC

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 1 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089V1DVY7

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 2 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089V7356R

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 3 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089VJYMT2

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 4 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089X8Q7WN

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 5 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089XFBPFL

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 6 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089XSTJKC

WOLF’S HEAD Entire Series (Issues 1 through 17, with issues 1 through 6 free) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MTGCS49

Amazon.ca (Canada)

WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089QXBYY9

STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089QX5LJC

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 1 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089V1DVY7

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 2 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089V7356R

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 3 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089VJYMT2

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 4 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089X8Q7WN

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 5 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089XFBPFL

WOLF’S HEAD Issue 6 — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089XSTJKC

WOLF’S HEAD Entire Series (Issues 1 through 17, with issues 1 through 6 free) — https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08MTGCS49

Teaser Images

Here are some teaser images for all eight comics!

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Short Story – Sheba the Great!

Well, this is an unexpected treat! A treat so unexpected that I’m going to take a moment to explain it first.

I first wrote the following short story, titled “Sheba the Great!” back in 2004. Almost twenty years ago… the mind kinda boggles at that. Anyway, at the time — and as I’ve discussed in the past — my drawing skills were not that strong. As a result, I wound up deciding to not draw the story. Instead, I shelved the story and moved on to other projects. Fast forward to the spring of 2015. My drawing skills had really improved and, looking around for something to draw, I stumbled across my old short story from, at that point, a decade before. So I did! It was a fun project and turned out really well. I didn’t colour it, but I did pencil and ink it.

And then something kinda goofy happened. I was in the process of working on a number of short stories (you can see some of those here) and once I finished “Sheba,” I moved on to other things. Shortly after that, I wound up having a pretty spectacular computer crash. Now, I back up everything regularly and I try to keep some of my key art files off-site, too. When I restored everything, “Sheba” had disappeared! I remember being extremely frustrated, but I was faced with a quandary. “Sheba” was seventeen pages long. Did I really feel like re-drawing and re-inking the entire thing? I decided that the answer was a pretty firm “No.” Part of that was my frustration, of course, but I also really didn’t feel like going backwards and re-working something I had felt that I already completed. Moving on felt right. And so I did.

Since the past year was pretty chaotic (to say the least) and as the holiday season was approaching, I wound up going through a couple of old hardrives that I had thought had “given up the ghost.” I was able to partially get into one of them and (drum roll please!), I discovered that I did have a copy of “Sheba” after all! What a pleasant surprise!

Looking over my art and storytelling, I felt that the story and my approach to it held up pretty well, all things considered. I wound up having some spare time over the holidays, though, that gave me the perfect opportunity to finally complete it. I spent a little bit of time tweaking a few things here and there (‘cuz, you know, one never stops growing with art). And, of course, it had never been coloured so I needed to do that from scratch. Plus lettering the whole thing, too. I was able finish the entire thing just before New Year’s Eve. That just left it for my erstwhile editor to give the story a final pass and the official “go ahead.” That has now been done. And so, here we are!

“Sheba the Great!” is a light-hearted sci-fi comedy that was a great deal of fun to write and a blast to draw. And it’s probably the oddest story I’ve ever presented you, dear reader. Written in 2004, drawn in 2015, tweaked in late 2022, and finally coloured, lettered, and edited also in late 2022. In other words, different aspects of me, working together across time. Kinda weird, but kinda wonderful!

“Sheba” also wears its influences on its sleeves. In a way, “Sheba” is a love letter to certain stories that I grew up. It’s the best way I have to say thank you to creators like Pedro Henry, Steve Dillon, Harry Harrison, and so on.

I really hope you enjoy it!

Update! I’m very pleased that people are having fun with this story! To thank everyone and to give a bit of content back to the greater comics community, I’m releasing the story as a free download in .cbz format. Actually, I’m doing it in two versions: a low-resolution version and a high-resolution version and both are available through Dropbox. The low-resolution version is here and is about 20 megs in size. The high-resolution version is here and is about 75 megs in size. Oh, once you have downloaded either version, you’ll need a .cbz reader to actually read it. If you don’t have one, Wikipedia has some suggestions right here. As always, please be careful downloading anything that you’re not sure about. Please do your own research to find the one that best fits your needs.

So, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing and illustrating it! And don’t forget to visit the rest of my archives. There are a number of other short stories that you can read for free right here. Thanks!

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